Rants on Cycling and on Life:
Photos of people and bicycles that pass in front of my camera

9.16.2009

positive mental octopus

the positive mental octopus t-shirtI had that shirt... I acquired that shirtsomehow... someone got back stage at a red hot chilli pepper's show

hold on... slow down... this is not my story... I was not even there.

anyway... anyhow... let me start overthis guy that worked for Apple Courier was backstage at the Chili Pepper's shownot sure how... where... or why... maybe it was a connection to a guy that used to hang at dupontmaybe he knew someone who worked at the clubmaybe... maybe... or maybe... I do not know

well.. I guess I will throw down some nicknamesthere was "The Madguy" who hung at Dupont when people hung in Dupontwell... Bill Magi (the mad guy) drove a limo at the timemaybe this entirely insane old school skater was driving the band that nightwho knows... maybe the back door was open

in any case... so this skater from texas who worked as a messenger was back stage and stumbled on a box of t-shirtsnow well... you have to understand that the 80's skater\bicycle courier was in essence a modern day piratethere was a twisted logic to this tweaked bunch

so this guy... pillow... dave pillow... yes the same dave pillow who got impaled at the white flint rampyea... yea... I knowanother person's story... a local folklore tale that I was not there for...I was close enough to the source to tell the correct details... anything I say is information older than second handin any case back to the main story

this guy has this box of t-shirts and somehow one of them ended up in my hands

a free t-shirt to one of my favorite bands at the time?why thank you!

that shirt got some serious mileagesurprised I was not wearing it in that photo from a bike tour I did in Europe in 1991that shirt was on that tour... it is just not in that set of photos

so I had that shirt? what is this story about? a t-shirt?

if you can believe it I have not gotten to the meat of the messagein short... my kids are cool... my kids make me so proudthis morning I played some music as I sipped my coffee, played FACEBOOK Scrabble, and barked over my shoulder for the kids to get dressed for schoolI always cover for them when Lisa calls upstairs to see if they are getting readyit is common to yell down... they are out of bed getting dressed

so this morning I gave a verbal check to their statusas progress in the morning can take a long timethe task at hand can be lost to so many distractionssometime it is the silent call of the pillowother times it is an effort to pick up in the game where things were the night prior

in an effort to get their full attention I turned down the music and presented my querywhen I was done and got my update Grant walked over and ushered me to turn it back up because it was The Red Hot Chilli Peppers!he knew who it was and he wanted it back on and he wanted it loudermy boys have a few pop favorites... radio hits... but they key on this sort of music

come on... who has to tell a kid that The Beastie Boys are cool?no wiggles in my house... okay... when they were little I may have sung along to Hot Potato a few timesbut that was no Pancake Mountain!

as the Chili Peppers use to say... if you have to ask

I remember a short time prior to thatmaybe a record prior the Red Hot Chili Peppers played to a small crowd at an outdoor stage on the Campus of George Masonit as cool. it was cool that we got it together and drove up from St Mary's College of Maryland past the city for this show... who heard about it... how accurate was this word of mouth informationapparently accurate enough because we were there when it happened

good times

I wish that there were a documentary of even a book with stories/exploits from the skate scenealthough I did not really skate I was close enough to catch some of the stories as they traveled via word of mouththis was all pre-youtube... than goodness pre-youtubeokay... tangent jumping again...but I will continue

it would be cool to get one story along with a portrait shot from any of a number of characters from back in the daybetter yet... get Hound dog to set up a camera... get it together with a ramp and a couple of kegsonce the beer starts flowing so would the stories

the Toke Team was only one of the may groups of insanity that had me believing that the modern Hells Angels rode skateboards rather than motorcyclesbeyond anything early Brando could have done to be considered The Wild One

oh man... the storiesso many of those characters were great story tellerspassionate people with boundless energy

there needs to be some documentation of this stufforal historyor even written historypeople are getting oldand of course people are dyingtoo many people are dead

too many people showed that LIVE FAST AND DIE HARD is more than just a bumper sticker

that tangent had me all over the placeall over the webabout to post a cool photo from a very cool blogthere were other pagesbut I did not book mark them

1 comment:

how did I miss this post?that defines 'it'.Saw RHCP once, 88/89 with Oingo Boingo, and the guys Team Cheez from Vegas, and it ended with an old orange chevy blazer backed up to a huge stack of soda outside a grocery store at 2am.

"shoot dood, why would it be out here if they wanted it? the place is closed"

"uhhh, cause you're in Utah. and no one would expect someone totake it?"

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